


No Sleep Till Ba Sing Se

by geckosocks



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Bonding, Enemies to Friends, Found Family, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Ozai, Katara & Zuko (Avatar) Friendship, Kidnapping, The Gaang Learns How Zuko Got The Scar (Avatar), Zuko has no concept of women's work, Zuko's Big Brother Instincts, also the title is a lie, except instead it's Zuko and Katara kidnapping each other across an Earth Kingdom Desert, katara is a great wingwoman, road trip fic, strictly platonic Zutara, they definitely do sleep before Ba Sing Se, zukka - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29810217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckosocks/pseuds/geckosocks
Summary: Mid-season one:  when Zuko and Katara end up in the same Earth Kingdom town, heading in the same direction, Zuko (mostly by accident) kidnaps Katara. Except then she escapes, and kidnaps him. With the Fire Navy controlling the ocean, and Aang and Sokka waiting in Ba Sing Se, Zuko and Katara end up making the trek across the Earth Kingdom desert together (while continually taking each other prisoner). But the walk to Ba Sing Se is far too long to make in silence, and so Zuko and Katara talk, about brothers and sisters and nations and camel-bears, and somewhere in the desert, something begins to change.(Updates Tuesdays)
Relationships: Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), The Gaang & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 138





	1. Kidnapping Goes Both Ways

In his defense, Zuko hadn’t _meant_ to kidnap her.

He knows it’s not much of a defense, but it’s true. It had happened by accident: a week after being shipwrecked in an Earth Kingdom town he couldn’t name, Zuko had seen the Water Tribe girl, the _Avatar’s friend_ , step out of a shop. Without really thinking, Zuko had started following - sometimes, Zuko wonders if _hunt the Avatar_ has become some intrinsic part of him, something he just can’t _not_ do at this point. Following the girl had led to the outskirts of town, into the surrounding desert, and then further still, as she set off down the sandy road carrying a pack and looking nervous.

She seemed to be following the coast. And it fit so well with where Zuko had thought the Avatar was that he knew, suddenly, he had been exactly right: she was heading for Ba Sing Se, which meant the _Avatar_ was in Ba Sing Se, exactly like Zuko had been suspecting. Which meant Zuko didn’t even have to follow her. He could turn back, get himself a boat (and why a waterbender would choose to _walk_ instead of getting a boat, he had _no_ idea) and get there before her. He could have the Avatar captured in a week. He could finally finish this.

(There was still the possibility Zuko would fail - again - that this time would be no different from the last, that the Avatar would keep escaping from him, over and over. But it didn’t _matter_ , whether Ba Sing Se would finally be different, or whether it wouldn’t. Avatar-hunting hadn’t been optional for three years; Zuko didn’t know how to do anything else. Even though he was now down a boat, a crew, and an uncle, he couldn’t stop. He had to get to Ba Sing Se, had to try again. It was the only thing he knew how to do.)

And then, while Zuko had been distracted, the Water Tribe girl stopped walking. Zuko had been keeping about thirty yards behind her, trying to blend in, but it’s hard to hide in a desert. When she stopped, she had seen him. They’d fought, there in the desert, just too far from the ocean for her to have the advantage. And now her pack is lying on the ground next to Zuko’s, there’s nothing but sand and cacti and the ocean cliffs for miles around them, her wrists are tied with an old shirt Zuko’s somehow still carrying in his bag, she’s glaring up at him, and Zuko has absolutely no idea what to do next.

“Ok,” he says out loud, trying to take calming breaths. This...is one of the stupider things he’s done. “Alright. So -” he’s not sure what he would have said, but he doesn’t get a chance to finish, before the Water Tribe girl cuts him off.

“He’s not here,” she says, glaring up at Zuko. 

“Yeah, I know,” he says. What, does she think he thinks the Avatar is hiding behind a cactus?

“I don’t know what you want from me,” she says, her words somehow tense and sharp at the same time, vicious and maybe almost...scared? “but you’re not getting it. I don’t care what you do, I’m not telling you _anything_.” She’s eyeing his hands, and it takes Zuko a moment to figure out what she means.

“What?” he says, a second before it clicks. _Oh_ , he realizes. She thinks he’s going to - to try to make her talk. He’s a firebender. No wonder she’s watching his hands. “I’m not going to - _no_ ,” he says, hoping his voice doesn’t sound as horrified as he feels. Is that what he’s _supposed_ to do? Is that what you do with prisoners, in a war? 

It’s definitely what Zhao would do, and it’s also something Zuko thinks he’s literally, physically incapable of doing, just like he’s incapable of not hunting the Avatar. It doesn’t matter, though, because he doesn’t need her to tell him anything. He knows everything he needs to know. That is, he knows the Avatar is in Ba Sing Se, and really, the only option he has now is to get there. 

Which begs the question of why he’s taken her prisoner in the first place, if he knows everything he needs to know, and brings Zuko back to the thought that this was all a supremely _dumb_ idea. 

“You’re not going to do _what_ , firebender?” she asks. Her glare slips down to his hands and then come back up to meet his eyes. Zuko has no idea how to respond to this. 

“Do you -” he starts, and then stops. He thinks sixteen years of being Azula’s older brother ought to have prepared him for this, but apparently not. Apparently a furious, sharp-tongued fourteen-year-old girl can still throw him off.

Zuko...does not know what do. He wishes Uncle were here: Uncle would know how to handle this, would be able to stop Zuko from doing anything else stupid. Actually, if Uncle were here, he would have stopped Zuko from doing something as stupid as kidnapping the girl in the first place. But Uncle isn’t here. Uncle might be _dead_ for all Zuko knows (Uncle can’t be dead. Uncle must have survived the storm, he must be safe on the _Wani_ somewhere, drinking tea and waiting for Zuko to find him. Uncle’s alive, he _has_ to be.)

(Zuko is incapable of not hunting the Avatar and of hurting this girl for information, and he’s incapable of going on if Uncle isn’t ok. Uncle will be alright, because there’s simply no other option.)  
  


Zuko takes a deep breath, and takes stock of the situation. The Earth Kingdom town he’d been staying in for the past week - Fuyang, Zuko thinks it was called - is a good four hours behind them. The coast is probably half an hour away, he guesses, based on how long it’s been since the road started curving away from the ocean. 

“Whatever you do,” she says, interrupting his thoughts, and making Zuko wonder whether she’s been speaking this whole time, “I won’t tell you where they are. You can burn me, you can kill me - I’m not giving them up.”

And _now_ Zuko’s paying attention. “I’m not going to - I’m not going to _hurt_ you,” he says. In the back of his mind, he wonders, again, if it’s something he shouldn’t promise. If he were his father, if he were Zhao - but Zuko isn’t either of them. He’s only himself, a banished Fire Nation Prince, and there’s no way under Agni’s sky he could do that. He doesn’t know whether that makes him weak or _what_ , but it doesn’t much matter, right now. 

She narrows her eyes at him. 

“For the last time,” Zuko says, beginning to feel exasperated, “I know where they are. I’m not going to hurt you, and I literally don’t even need to.”

  
Her expression goes from a glare to a glower. “You don’t know where they are,” she tells him, clenching her jaw. “And if this is some of trick to make me tell you - ”

Zuko takes a deep breath. Focuses on the miles and miles of sand around them. The road is only the barest path in the sand, here, surrounded by desert and cacti and, on the horizon line, the cliffs. He needs to find Uncle. He needs to capture the Avatar. He needs to know what to do with this waterbender.

Zuko takes another deep breath. He feels weirdly like he’s trying to calm down after an argument with Azula, rather than trying to figure out how to deal with being stranded in the desert with a Water Tribe girl as prisoner. At this point, he’s not sure which situation _should_ be more stressful, just like he’s not sure which one actually is.

Zuko exhales slowly. Uncle...will have to wait. Zuko’s almost certain Uncle’s fine. The ship is fine. It wasn’t the kind of storm that would take down a whole ship, and he was the only one stupid enough to be on deck, to get swept overboard.

No. He needs to keep moving. He needs to find the Avatar. He can’t let anything stand in his way, can’t just - give up, now, not after all this time, not just because he’s stuck in the middle of an Earth Kingdom desert with no supplies, no crew, and an angry waterbending prisoner.

“Ok,” he says to the girl. He needs to learn her name. It starts with a K, he thinks. Kara? Korra? “Um, what’s your name?”

She glares at him again, and doesn’t answer. He sighs. 

“Ok,” Zuko says again, because it doesn’t matter. This is fine. It’s all fine.

The fastest way to Ba Sing Se. Zuko tries to picture a map. They’re probably only a week or or so away by boat. He’s not particularly familiar with this desert, but where there’s a coast, there must be a port, right? 

So all he needs to do is get to the port. Follow the coastline, follow this road, get a boat, and capture the Avatar. And somehow, keep a waterbender prisoner the whole time. He wonders, again, why she didn’t get a boat in Fuyang, why she seems to be planning to walk from here to Ba Sing Se. 

She’s definitely not going to tell him, though, so he’ll have to make due not knowing.

“Ok,” Zuko says aloud, for the third time. He looks at their packs, still lying on the ground. She’s still sitting. He wonders, suddenly if she got hurt during their fight. She certainly hurt _him_ \- he’s going to have bruises on his ribs for weeks from where her water slammed into him. But if she’s hurt - how is he supposed to cross the desert with an injured waterbending prisoner?

Zuko looks down at her again. She doesn’t _seem_ hurt, at least, no worse then he is. She’s probably banged up a bit from when he knocked her to the ground, but besides that, she seems - ok. 

“Are you - are you good to walk?” Zuko asks, and she glares at him again, then stands. Zuko lets out a breath. That’s something. At least she can stand.

This was such a stupid thing to do. The entire last week has been Zuko doing one stupid thing after another, from standing on the deck of his ship during a storm, to following this Water Tribe girl into the desert, to _taking her prisoner_. Zuko can’t, apparently, even get shipwrecked properly.

“Where are we going?” she asks, standing now. Her hands are still bound in front of her, but Zuko knows that won’t stop her from waterbending, if they get close enough to water.

Somehow, Zuko has to follow the coastline, and spend a week on a ship with an enemy waterbending prisoner. For the first time, he wonders if they should walk, instead. It’s probably three weeks across the desert, but maybe that’s better than letting her drown him on a ship. 

Zuko can feel his hands starting to heat up. He takes a deep breath, and then another, trying to keep calm. For now, it doesn’t matter whether he wants to cross the desert on foot, or sail. The next step is the same: they need to follow this desert road until they reach another town, then either restock on supplies for a trek across the desert, or get a boat. 

“Where are we going?” the Water Tribe girl repeats, holding his gaze, her eyes narrowed. 

Zuko might not be his father, might not be Zhao, but he’s not _stupid_. He’s not going to tell a prisoner exactly where he’s taking her. 

“That’s not for you to worry about,” he says, and her jaw clenches. 

“Am I allowed to carry my own pack?” she asks. Zuko picks it up. It’s heavier than he expected, but not so heavy that it will be a problem.

“No,” he says, shouldering it next to his own, then looks at her. She glares back. “Let’s move.”  
  


“And what,” she asks, “if I don’t?”

Zuko needs to keep moving. He cannot give up now, can’t admit defeat in this desert, won’t let his search stop for the first time in three years because of one Water Tribe girl. He doesn’t know what would happen to him, if he stopped hunting the Avatar; it seems not impossible that he would just straight-up die, would cease to exist, would maybe never have existed at all.

He stares at her, and tries to sound as much like his father as he can. “I’m a firebender, and you’re a prisoner. Do you really want to try that?”  
  


Her eyes narrow, and he hadn’t realized she could turn the glare _up_ , but somehow, she does. If she were the firebender, Zuko thinks, he would be burning by now, from that look alone.

“Let’s move,” he says, and this time, she starts walking.

  
  


***

  
  


Zuko stays behind her. He carries their packs over his shoulder, and they make their way down the dusty road. Every once in a while, an armadillo-rabbit scurries in front of them, or a meerkat-snake pokes up from a hole in the ground. Whenever the road curves towards the ocean, Zuko tenses, trying to figure out exactly how far away they are. He doesn’t know what the waterbender’s range is, how close they would have to be to the ocean for her to use it, and he would rather not find out.

They walk for about two hours, Earth Kingdom time, Zuko guesses, before the girl speaks up.

“So,” she says, and he can’t see her face, but from her tone, he thinks its safe to assume she’s giving the road in front of them the same death glare she’s been giving him all day. “How did you know I was in Fuyang?”

Zuko shouldn’t reply, but he does. “I didn’t,” he says. “I ended up there for - other reasons.”

“Oh?” she asks, the single-syllable somehow as scathing as anything.

“Not _everything_ I do is about you guys.”

She snorts. “Right. Which is why you’ve chased us halfway around the world.”

“If we’re asking questions,” Zuko says, as the path slopes upward, “then what were you doing in Fuyang by yourself?”

“How do you know I was by myself?” she snaps. She seems to relax a little, though; Zuko wonders why. Was there something she didn’t want him to know, some reason she was worried about him having tracked her to Fuyang?

“Because you left on your own, and because you just said that,” Zuko says. He tries not to sound out-of-breath as the uphill steepens. “If the Avatar were hiding out in Fuyang, you would never say anything to suggest he actually were there.”  
  


“Maybe,” she says, sounding a little out-of-breath too, “that’s exactly what I wanted you to think.”  
  


They’ve reached the top of the hill. “Then you wouldn’t have said _that_ ,” Zuko says, and shakes his head before she can respond. “Whatever. Hey, will you tell me your name?”   
  


She stops walking, and turns around. “How do you not know my name?” she says, and that...was not the reaction Zuko was expecting.

“What?” he says. She’s glaring at him again, but it’s a different glare, somehow. This one weirdly seems more offended than hateful.

“You’ve chased us halfway around the world and you don’t know my _name_? How is that possible?”

Zuko stares at her. “What, should I have gotten to know you? Learned your birthdays? Figured out how you take your tea?”

She makes frustrated sound, then turns back around and starts walking again, faster this time. He follows.

“The least you could do,” she says, over her shoulder, “would be to learn the names of the people you’re trying to kidnap. I bet you don’t even know A - the Avatar’s name.” 

So it starts with an A. For a moment, Zuko seriously tries to think, to remember what the Avatar’s name is, just so he can prove to this Water Tribe girl he does know it. Then he shakes his head, clearing it, and scowls forwards at the her back. She can’t see him, but whatever. 

“It literally doesn’t matter,” Zuko says, as they reach the top of the hill, “But no, I don’t know the Avatar’s name.”

“Yeah, of course you don’t,” she says. She’s walking faster now. He keeps up with her. This is good. At this pace, they’ll probably reach the next town soon.

It’s fine. He doesn’t need to know her name. She’s a prisoner of the Fire Nation now. _Zhao_ wouldn’t bother to learn his prisoner’s names. 

(Zuko doesn’t particularly want to be like Zhao.)

“Why do you care?” she asks. 

“I don’t,” Zuko snaps back. The packs are heavy on his shoulder. “I just thought I ought to have some way to think of you besides ‘Water Tribe girl’.”

She snorts. “Right. Because we’re all interchangeable, aren’t we?”

“Because I don’t know your name!” Zuko protests. Then, “ _Whatever_ . You’re a prisoner. This doesn’t matter.”   
  


“Well,” she says, and there’s a strange pause. And suddenly, every one of Zuko’s senses goes into high alert, because he hasn’t been paying attention to the path, to how far they are from the-

ocean.

So this is how close she needs to be in order to bend, Zuko thinks, as saltwater arcs up from the cliffs and slams him into the ground. He doesn’t think she’s actually pulling water all the way from the ocean - there seem to be pools along the tops of the cliffs, and he thinks that’s what she’s using - but it doesn’t much matter. His hands spark to life, but the water puts the flames out before they can even start. And then the bender girl, whose name Zuko still doesn’t know, is standing over him, holding the old shirt Zuko had used to bind her hands earlier that afternoon. He blinks the stars out of his eyes, and finds there’s still water stuck to his eyelashes. He blinks again.

“I guess I’m not a prisoner anymore,” the Water Tribe girls says. She bends down to tie his hands together. “But I think you are.”

  
  


***

  
  


The Fire Prince - Zuko, that is, Katara actually does know his name - is scowling up at her. 

“You know I’m a firebender,” he says flatly, as Katara finishes tying the old shirt around his hands. “This won’t exactly hold me.”

“I know,” Katara agrees, and then flicks her wrist to pull a puddle of water off the ground, dousing Zuko’s arms. His eyes flit down to the now-soaked shirt wrapped around his wrists, then back up at her.

“This still won’t stop me,” he says. “We’re in a desert. In about five minutes, this will be dry again, and I’ll be able to burn through it.”  
  


Spirits, why in La’s name would he _tell_ her that? Does he _want_ to get killed?   
  


“I know,” Katara says, trying to keep her voice even. “But for now, the shirt is filled with water, and I’ll know when that water’s gone. So if you try to burn through it, I’ll know, and then,” Katara lets water swirl up around her legs, “you get doused.”

He scowls again. “We’re in a desert. You need to work on your threats.”

Katara grits her teeth. “Come on,” she says, standing. “Get up. We have to move.”  
  


He stands up slowly, trying to hide a wince. Katara wonders whether she hurt him, when she 

slammed him into the ground with the water.

Whatever. He’s Fire Nation. He’s _Prince Zuko_. It literally could not matter less whether he’s hurt.

“Let’s go,” Katara says again. Zuko looks at her. 

“And where are we going, water girl?” he asks. Katara grinds her teeth together. Something about being called ‘girl’ by Prince Zuko makes her want to freeze something into spindles and shatter it.

“Down the cliff,” she says, pointing to a switchback path that cuts from where they are down to the sea. “Let’s _move_.”

He doesn’t. 

“Firebender,” she says, feeling for the water around their feet. “ _Go_.” 

He heaves a sigh, then finally starts making his way down the path. 

  
  
  


She follows him. It’s a slippery, winding path. Katara tries not to lose her footing, but it’s hard. Every step takes focus, and Katara’s is split, between trying not to fall to her death, trying to keep track of how much water is left in the shirt tying Zuko’s hands together, and making sure to keep the ocean in her perception, in case he tries to attack her again. 

In short, Katara nearly slips off the path about a dozen times. And because she’s also focusing on _water_ and _Zuko_ , each time she nearly falls, she sends one of the pools of water near the path spiraling up and over Zuko. On the third time it happens, he stops walking, and turns around.

“Hey, ocean queen,” he says, glaring at her, his hair dripping. “Can you maybe _stop_ drenching me every time you lose your step? I didn’t set you on fire every time I nearly tripped over an armadillo-rabbit.” He holds up his hands, still bound by the dripping shirt. “And I’m not exactly burning through this thing any time soon, so, can you not?”

Katara tries to keep herself from blushing. Of course she has to have less control over her bending then a _firebender_. And of course, Zuko probably had someone to teach him to control his fire before he was fourteen, but still. It’s infuriating.

“Keep walking, firebender,” Katara says, gritting her teeth again. Zuko scowls, and then turns back around.

“Hey,” Zuko says suddenly, after a few minutes of silence. “You called me ‘firebender.’”

“So?” Katara asks, as the switchback curves around again. They’re almost at the bottom, which is a relief.

“So you don’t know my name either,” he says, a little triumphantly, and then quickly tries to scowl again, as though hiding it. “I mean - it doesn’t matter. But you don’t my name.”

Katara lifts her eyes upwards for a moment, before realizing that’s going to make her even more likely to fall.

“Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation,” Katara says flatly, as the path starts to level out. “Son of Fire Lord Ozai and heir to the throne. I know your damn name, firebender.”

The path turns from stone to sand, as they step onto the beath. Zuko stops, and turns around. 

“Still not going to tell me yours?” he asks.

“No,” Katara says. She eyes the shirt around his wrists. It’s still soaked through, but...She flicks her hand, sending another spray of water over it. 

“Great,” he says, glaring at her. “Thanks. I really needed to make my hands feel _more_ waterlogged.”

Katara ignores that. This...is not going to work, long-term. It’s too hard to focus on so many things, too stressful to be bracing herself for him to attack all the time. She wonders if it’s worth risking a boat. That had been the original plan, to sail back and meet Aang and Sokka in Ba Sing Se as soon as she had...taken care of what she needed to, in Fuyang. But Fuyang hadn’t worked out any better than the sailing back plan: when Sokka and Aang left, the sea had been clear, and a waterbender taking a boat to Ba Sing Se had seemed a totally reasonable plan. But in the days since, the Fire Navy had sailed in, and now, no ship can get in or out of this desert.

Which means she’s stuck walking across the desert with a firebending prisoner.

“Alright,” she says aloud. She’s _hungry_. Between being kidnapped, and then kidnapping her kidnapper, she hasn’t eaten since she left town this morning. Over the ocean, the sun is starting to go down. It’s been a long day.

Katara looks at Zuko. The shirt around his hands is still dripping. Actually, all of his clothes are dripping.

Her stomach growls. If she’s hungry, he must be hungry, too. He’s about Sokka’s age, Katara realizes. If Sokka is any indication of how much a teenage boy eats, Zuko must be _really_ hungry.

“What?” Zuko asks, and Katara realizes she’s been staring at him.

They need to eat. Which means she somehow needs to be able to untie his hands, without him immediately attacking her. She looks around the beach, her eyes landing on waves lapping at the sand.

She drops Zuko’s pack to the ground, keeping hers in her hand. “Come on,” she says, walking towards the water. Zuko doesn’t move.

“What are you doing?” he asks, standing still. His shoulders are tense. 

“We’re going this way,” she says. “Come _on_. Let’s go.” She’s hungry. The sooner they step into the water, the sooner she can untie his hands, and then they can _eat_. It’s not her best plan ever, but she figures, if she can’t take down a firebender when they’re both waist-deep in the ocean, she probably deserves to be taken prisoner again.

“No,” Zuko says, and Katara stops.

“What?”  
  


Zuko exhales. “No. I’m not following a waterbender into the ocean.”  
  


Katara stares at him. “Fire Prince, you’re a _prisoner._ What was it you said to me earlier, about me being a prisoner and you being a firebender? Well, now you’re a prisoner and I’m a waterbender and we’re on a beach. Let’s _move_.”

“No,” Zuko says again, and Katara is going to _scream_ . She’s halfway through throwing her hands into the air when he continues. “No. If you want to kill me, there’s - I’ve got a knife in my pack. You can do it here. I’ll die on my feet, but I won’t - I don’t want to _drown_.”   
  
She stares at him. He holds her gaze, shoulders tense. Spirits, he’s _serious_. 

“Firebender,” she says, still staring, “ _Fire Prince Zuko_ , I’m not planning to _drown you in the ocean._ We’re going to go into the water so I can untie your hands. So we can both _eat something_. Because the sun is setting and I’m hungry, and I’m going to guess you are, too.”

His face is a mask of blank confusion for a moment, before his expression clears. “I - ok,” he says, and glances down at his hands, where the soggy t-shirt is still binding his wrists together. He straightens up, looking from the ocean, where waves are still lapping at the sand, to Katara.

“Can we go now?” Katara asks, impatience tempered only slightly by the echo of his words, of the Fire Prince telling her _I’ll die on my feet_.

He still looks suspicious, but this time, when she motions towards the water, he follows. They make their way down the beach. As his feet first touch the water, Zuko jumps back. Katara stares at him.

“Sorry,” he mutters, and steps forward again. “It’s fucking freezing.”

It is, but there’s nothing Katara can do about that. “Can’t firebenders control their temperature?”

“Not when we’re in the middle of an ocean.” He steps forward carefully, as though careful steps will keep him dry, even as he walks into the water. The sky is dark above them, the stars bright.

Once the water is up to Zuko’s waist and well past Katara’s stomach, she stops walking.

“Alright,” she says. “Can you -” she gestures to his hands, and he reluctantly holds them out. Katara reaches into her pack - Zuko’s is still lying on the beach - and pulls out a knife. Zuko’s shoulders tense, almost imperceptibly, and Katara rolls her eyes. She cuts through the shirt as quickly as she can, not realizing until she does that this is going to create a problem for later. What’s she supposed to tie his hands with, now?

Whatever. That’s a problem for after they’ve eaten. She bends the water out of the shirt, and then drops it into her pack, along with the knife. She had bought some bread and jerky in Fuyang, which she takes out now. She has a few pouches of water, too, which makes her realize how thirsty she is. They’ve been walking in a desert all day, and she hasn’t had anything to eat or drink since Zuko kidnapped her six hours ago.

Which is mostly on Zuko, she thinks, but also half on her. 

“Here,” she says, tearing off half the bread and handing it to Zuko. She tosses him one of the water pouches, too. He looks at it in surprise. “What,” Katara asks, “not princely enough for you?”

He blushes. “No,” he says, looking down at the food in his hands, then at the dark ocean around them. “This is good. Uh - ” he seems like there’s something he wants to say, so she waits, but he just shakes his head, and takes a bite of the bread. 

“Jerky?” Katara asks. He shrugs, so she hands him a few pieces. And then they eat in silence, waist deep in the ocean, the stars reflecting off the dark water. Her and the Fire Prince.

“Um, thanks,” Zuko says quietly, a moment later. “And - sorry. For not stopping earlier. I sort of just - forgot.”  
  
Katara’s mouth is full of bread and jerky, so she settles for just staring at him. He blushes, and looks down.

“It’s alright, firebender,” she says after a moment, swallowing. She considers asking _how in La’s name does one forget to eat_ , but then decides it’s a little hypocritical of her; if she hadn’t _also_ forgotten, they could have eaten two hours ago, when she first took him prisoner, instead of waiting until now to finally stop moving.

She takes another bite of bread, and in the ocean in front of her, Fire Prince Zuko does the same. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "why is there an ocean next to the desert" blame the ATLA world map not me


	2. Caves and Cliffs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko is bad at being a prisoner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're confused about what the cave looks like in this chapter, please read the notes at the end!

They finish eating, and Katara realizes she has _no_ plan for what to do now. It’s nighttime; the next town is another full day’s walk away. If she tries to walk it straight, without sleeping, she won’t make it. Or she’ll be so exhausted, Zuko will have no problem taking her prisoner again. No, she definitely needs to sleep. But how is she supposed to do that with a _firebending prisoner?_

Katara glances at dark water around them, and looks up ahead, where the beach disappears and the waves comes right up to the cliffside. 

“Hey, ocean queen,” Zuko says, putting the cap back on the water pouch. He looks like he’s trying to pretend his teeth aren’t chattering, but they definitely are. The water is _cold_. “Are we going to walk through the night, or are we sleeping?” 

It’s irritating, somehow, that Zuko’s noticed the same problem. Katara watches the waves fall against the cliffside, and tries to think. She remembers the cliffs back home, where water met rock. Sokka had always wanted to swim under and look for caves, and she would always follow, in case he did something stupid and needed her waterbending to get out. 

“Let’s go,” she says, deciding, and starts making her way back to the beach. Zuko follows. She reaches the shore, and bends the water out of her clothes, then looks at Zuko, who’s still dripping wet. He scowls at her. 

“I can bend my clothes dry, too,” he says, sounding annoyed, “as long as you won’t kill me for doing it.”

Katara rolls her eyes, and bends the water out of his clothes. She’s too tired for this. 

“Let’s go,” she says again, stopping to pick up Zuko’s pack, before making her way towards the place where the water meets the cliffs. 

She tries to feel down with her bending, looking for where there might be a break in the stone, for where the water dips into the rock and vanishes, and - yes, there it is.

She turns to Zuko. “Can you swim, firebender?” she asks, and he looks at her with trepidation. 

“Um, yeah,” he says warily. “But what are we - ”

“Great,” Katara interrupts. “We’re going down there.” She points down to where she can sense the cave, which - yeah, to Zuko, must look like pointing straight into the ocean.

Zuko stares at her. “What?”

“Do you want to sleep, or no?”

“I want to keep moving,” Zuko says, crossing his arms.

Katara levels her eyes at him. “You’re a _prisoner_. You don’t get a say in this.”

He mutters something that sounds suspiciously like _you asked_. 

“There’s a cave,” Katara says. “We have to swim to get there, but it’s dry inside, I can feel it. We can sleep there, and then keep moving tomorrow. Okay?”

“This is an insane plan,” Zuko announces to the dark beach, scowling again. “We’re going to die. Even waterbenders can’t breathe under the ocean.

“We don’t have to breathe under the ocean,” Katara says impatiently, “because there’s a cave down there, where there will be _air_.”

“Will there?” Zuko asks, glaring at her. “Or will we just _drown_ , _immediately_ , because you decided it made sense to swim down into an _invisible underwater cave_ in the _dark?_ ”

Katara glowers at him. He glowers back.

Katara can sense the cave. She knows it's there, can feel damp walls that don’t surround water, which means there’s a good part of the cave that’s dry, where there will be air and a safe place to sleep. If she couldn’t sense it, though, would she be willing to take someone else’ word for it? If Zuko were the one who could feel the cave, and she couldn’t, she wouldn’t go. That, she knows for certain.

But it doesn’t _matter_ . Because he’s a firebender, and if they sleep on the beach, she’ll wake up as a prisoner of the Fire Nation. And she _knows the cave is there_ , and if they get to it, she’ll be safe. Even Prince Zuko won’t be stupid enough to try and fight a waterbender in an underwater cave.

“Firebender,” Katara says, “the cave is there. We’ll be _fine_. It’s barely below the surface - we don’t even have to swim that far to get to it.” 

His arms stay crossed. Katara throws hers up in exasperation.

“Do we have to go back to the threats?” she demands. “Like when you said you would use your firebending against me if I didn’t walk? How about, either you swim down into that cave with me, or I drag you?”

“That’s not - I wouldn’t have - ” He glares at her again. “What about the shark-squids? Don’t they come out after dark?”

“I can sense things in the water. I’ll know if one’s coming.”

He keeps glaring at her. Katara matches his expression. “So right before it attacks us, you’ll know we’re going to die? That’s not super helpful, water princess.”

Katara grinds her teeth together. “Why is it,” she asks, more to the sky than anything else, “that when firebenders threaten people, everyone is scared silly, but when a waterbender tells someone what to do, _right next to the ocean_ , no one listens?”

“Fine,” Zuko says, uncrossing his arms. “You know what? Let’s do it. It’s not like the shark-squids only eat firebenders. At least it’ll get us off this Agni-forsaken beach.”

“What do you have against the beach?” Katara asks him, momentarily bewildered. The beach is actually the nicest thing about their situation. The waves are lapping softly at the sand, the black water glittering under the night sky. 

Zuko scowls down at the sand and kicks a rock. “We’ve been here too long. We have to move.”

Katara stares at him. “ _Prisoner_ , Fire Prince. You don’t choose how fast we move.”

“Fine,” Zuko says, recrossing his arms. “So we can stand here all night and argue and _not_ get eaten by a shark-squid. I’m good with that, too.”

So Zuko still thinks he’s in charge. Typical firebender. Typical _guy_. He’s - well, his hands aren’t tied together anymore, but he’s still her prisoner, and yet, he somehow thinks he has the upper hand, somehow still thinks this is just a continuation of his mission to capture Aang.

Which makes Katara wonder whether she’s making a mistake by leading him right to Ba Sing Se, but that’s a problem they’ll deal with in the morning.

“Alright then, firebender,” she says out loud, keeping her gaze level with his. “Let’s swim.”

And, thank the Spirits, he actually starts walking towards the water this time, before he stops again.

“Can I carry my own pack?” he asks.

“Nope,” she says, adjusting its strap over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”  
  
“I don’t know where the cave is,” he says, recrossing his arms. “You have to lead the way.”

She keeps her eyes on him as she makes her way into the water, and somehow, magically, _finally_ , he follows her.

It’s a little terrifying. The water is freezing, which she had expected, and _dark_ , which she had also expected but which is somehow still horribly unsettling. She can feel the cave ahead of her, and Zuko behind her. She goes slowly, swimming down into the nighttime ocean, making sure Zuko can see where she’s going in the dark water. And even though she will never admit it, she makes sure to keep feeling out for anything else that might be in the water with them.

The cave is not very deep. She wouldn’t have tried this if it was. Maybe forty seconds after they start swimming, she’s running her hands along underwater stone, and then pulling herself up and over, until she raises her head and breathes air.

She feels Zuko pull himself out of the water next to her, raggedly gasping for breath.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says, his voice echoing around the dark cave. He coughs, and then coughs again, and Katara really hopes she didn’t just kill him. Her eyes are slowly adjusting. What she had thought was a pitch-black cave is actually just barely illuminated by a crack in the stone above their heads, moonlight trickling through. 

It’s still basically impossible to see anything. Katara wonders whether this idea was as phenomenally stupid as it feels, right now.

“Shit, water girl,” Zuko says, and Katara can’t bring herself to muster much more than a glower at the epithet. “That was the _stupidest_ thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve done some pretty damn stupid things.”

He curses a lot, for a prince, Katara thinks idly. “Well,” she says aloud. “We made it, didn’t we?”

She can just barely make out his outline as he shakes his head. Her eyes must be playing tricks on her, because in the darkness, she almost thinks she sees him smiling. 

Katara peers down the length of the cave. Right now, they’re sitting in a pool of water, their clothes dripping, but she can feel where the water stops, about half a dozen feet from what looks like the back wall of the cave.

“I think it’s dry up there,” she says, pointing, before remembering he almost certainly can’t see her hand. “Um, away from the water. We can sleep there.”

“We’re seriously going to sleep in an underwater cave,” Zuko say, sounding a little too incredulous, Katara thinks, for someone who’s already swum down into said cave. She thinks he shakes his head again. “This is insane.” 

There’s not enough space to stand, but Katara slowly crawls forward, until the water under her legs disappears, and she reaches dry rock. And, for the first time, Zuko follows without arguing. 

Katara can hear his teeth chattering, and realizes hers are, too. She bends the water out of her clothes. And then, because she can still hear Zuko shivering, Katara sighs, and does Zuko’s, too. He yelps.

“What - ” he starts, then stops. She can see still only see his outline, but he seems to look down at his suddenly-dry clothes, then at her, then down again. 

It occurs to Katara that she’s successfully put herself into very close quarters with a firebender. The phrase _phenomenally stupid_ comes back into her head, but she pushes it away. They’re in an underwater cave. If he tries to bend, she can just flood the place. It would be a ridiculous risk for him to take, especially because he doesn’t seem to be particularly bothered by being her prisoner. And that’s going to be a problem for tomorrow, how he still thinks he’s in charge, even though he’s a _prisoner_ , but for now - for now, Katara wants to sleep. 

She opens her pack, and starts digging around for her blanket. Sleeping on the stone floor of the cave won’t be the most comfortable place she’s ever slept, but it also won’t be the worst. She’ll survive.

“Hey, ocean queen,” comes Zuko’s voice, still echoing strangely in the small cave. “It’s freezing in here.”  
  
Katara doesn’t know what to say to that. _Yeah, no shit_ comes to mind. “Sorry it doesn’t meet your princely standards.”

“No, that’s not what I -” he breaks off, then tries again. “Are you going to kill me if I bend?”  
  
Katara turns toward him. “If you attack me, yeah.”  
  
“I’m not going to attack a waterbender in an _underwater cave_. I was just going to - make it a little warmer.”  
  
“You can do that?” Katara asks. It seems strange: firebending for something other than destruction.

“Yeah,” Zuko says. “But I’ll have to make a flame, first. You going to kill me if I do that, water princess?”  
  
“One moment.” Katara feels out for the ocean beyond the cave, readies herself to pull it inward if she has to. “Ok, yeah. Go for it.”

Zuko’s hands light up, a small flame cupped between them. And Katara - she’s never seen firebending like this. Careful, and soft, and almost gentle. 

Zuko opens his palms, and the flame spreads outward, before disappearing with a _whoosh_. And then Katara feels the warmth, expanding from Zuko’s cupped hands and over the whole cave.

“Wow,” she says, without thinking about it. “I mean -” She wants to say something to make it clear she is _not_ impressed with his bending, but she can’t think of the words to express that, so she lets herself trail off. They sit in quiet for a moment, before Zuko speaks again.

“I’ve got a blanket in my pack,” he says. “Any chance I can get that?” 

Katara can’t see his face. She wonders whether he’s scowling again, in the way he was all evening. Maybe he’s glaring at her again, or maybe he’s stone faced, or maybe smiling. 

His voice doesn’t _sound_ like he’s glaring at her.

“Yeah,” Katara says, and reaches into his bag. Everything is soaked. She takes a breath, and bends the water out, before reaching in and handing Zuko his blanket.

“Right,” he says, once she’s given it to him. From his voice, it sounds like he’s laying down now. He sounds tired. Katara wonders whether he’s actually going to sleep now, or whether he’ll just stay up and plot. She honestly isn’t sure she cares; she’s so tired, she thinks she’ll be out as soon as her head touches the ground, no matter how hard she tries to stay awake.

“See you tomorrow, water princess,” Zuko says, and maybe it’s the strange, tired note in his voice, or maybe it’s the warmth of the cave, or just sheer exhaustion, but as Katara adjusts her blanket around her, she looks up.

“It’s Katara,” she says. And then, even though she’s in very close quarters with an enemy firebender, even though she doesn’t trust him at all, even though there are a thousand reasons he might try and kill her, she closes her eyes, and lets sleep take over.

* * *

Zuko wakes up in the cold. 

It takes him a moment to figure out where he is. Not because he doesn’t remember what happened, but because the whole thing - from being kidnapped by the waterbender girl in the desert, to wading into the ocean to eat, to swimming down into a cave to sleep - seems so ridiculous, he’s almost certain he dreamed it.

But no: he can hear the sound of the ocean, strange and echoing from this vantage point. There’s stone all around him, and light piercing through the water at the mouth of the cave, just enough of it for Zuko to see the damp stone, where the tide must have come in and then gone back out overnight. It never reached them, though. He thinks, for a moment, that they were extremely lucky: it must be easy to die in caves like this, if the tide comes in when you aren’t expecting it, floods the place and doesn’t let you out. He shivers, before remembering the waterbender - _Katara_ , his mind supplies, and he wonders if _that_ part was a dream - can, of course, sense water. She would have known this part of the cave was dry, known water must never makes it way all the way back here.

Katara still hasn’t woken up. It’s well past dawn, though, and there’s something strangely upsetting about having slept through it. Zuko hasn’t missed the dawn in a while. But he’s basically underwater; of course he didn’t feel the sun, didn’t manage to wake up with its rise. (Still, he can’t help but wonder, vaguely, what his father would say. Sleeping past daybreak, like he’s not even a firebender anymore.)

He watches Katara for a moment, before deciding there’s something weird about that, and fixes his eyes on the water lapping at the cave’s entrance, instead. He’s already decided not to fight her, at least, not until he’s no longer literally underneath water. He thinks, grudgingly, that this wasn’t a terrible plan on her part. He didn’t bother trying to stay up last night to attack her - the whole _underwater_ thing - and while he could have escaped, could swim away right now, he doesn’t try that, either. There’s not really any point in trying to lose her, he thinks. They’re going to the same place; and while there are maybe a thousand ways to get to Ba Sing Se, there must be only one _fastest_ way to get there from here, even if Zuko has yet to find out whether it’s by ocean or land. But he’s pretty sure he won’t be able to lose the Water Tribe girl for long, and it’s probably better to know where she is, than to have an enemy hiding somewhere in the desert, waiting to jump out at him.

Besides - and this is the place where Zuko’s thoughts get a little more uncertain - it probably makes sense to try and take her prisoner again. He isn’t quite sure why the thought feels almost wrong, somehow, but he tries to push past that. If he takes her prisoner, if he arrives at Ba Sing Se with one of the Avatar’s friends as a hostage, that has to be an advantage. It has to help. It’s what his father would do.

Maybe that will make the difference, this time. Maybe, this time, he’ll be able to go home.

Zuko glances at the cave entrance again, at the bright water. It’s well past daybreak, now. They should move. He turns back to the waterbender girl, still asleep on the stone. She must not have much experience taking hostages, Zuko thinks (and ignores the thought that he doesn’t, either. There’s been a steep learning curve for both of them, apparently.). Strange for her to sleep in, knowing she’s in a cave with a hostile firebender.

“Hey, water girl,” he says carefully. She doesn’t stir. He tries a little louder: “Ocean queen? Katara?” And by Agni, if he were this deep of a sleeper, he would _not_ have gone to sleep in a small space with a hostile bender.

He knocks one hand against the stone, and says her name again, and finally, she starts.

“What -” she sits up, and looks around the cave, as though she doesn’t remember where they are, as though it hadn’t been her ridiculous idea to come down here, in the first place. He knows the exact moment it clicks into place, because her eyes catch on him and she starts, and the next thing he knows, he’s soaked through, water already spilling back down and out of the cave.

Zuko glares at her. She blushes. “Sorry,” she says, and she sounds embarrassed. “I just - sorry.”  
  
He keeps glaring. 

“I can fix it,” she says, helpfully, raising a hand to bend the water out of his clothes.

“I can dry my own clothes,” he says flatly. 

“Yeah, but it’ll be more efficient if I do it.”

She doesn’t wait for a response, just flicks her hand and sends the saltwater back off of Zuko. He doesn’t realize until after, but he might not have been able to dry his own clothes, after all; being underground is starting to mess with his bending.

“We should get going,” Zuko says, forgetting how annoyed that had made her the previous night. Predictably, she scowls.

“Hey, firebender, what part of _you’re a prisoner_ do you not understand?”  
  
Zuko flicks his hand impatiently, and her eyes follow his fingers. So apparently, even in a cliffside cave under the ocean, she’s still scared of his bending. 

“Fine,” Zuko says, and even though he knows he should press every advantage he has, he folds his hands into his lap. There’s something about the way her eyes widen when she thinks he’s about to bend that - that makes him feel weird. He’s not sure why. But there’s something a little too familiar about that fear for him to exploit it.

Which is not to say he’s giving up on the argument. “Would you rather sit in this cave all day?” he demands. She glowers at him in response.

Zuko has been up for a lot longer than she has, and and somehow, she’s still beating him at the “angry facial expression” game. He tries for another glare, but he’s not sure it lands.

That’s the problem, he thinks, as they make their back up to the beach. He’s never been able to make himself really hate her, or the Avatar; he’s always just wanted to go home. Maybe that’s why they keep beating him.

“Alright, firebender,” she says, pulling out a shirt from her bag. She dips it in the ocean. “We’re going to do this again.”  
  
“Right,” Zuko says, as he holds out his hands. It’s not the worth fighting a waterbender next to an ocean, he figures, not over something is irrelevant as having a wet shirt wrapped around his wrists. “This. The thing where you drench me every time you slip on a rock?”  
  
She turns her glare back on immediately, and doesn’t respond. Zuko sighs. They...are going to need a better system than this. 

He needs to be in control again.

* * *

They make their way up the cliff; the path is slippery, with pools of water along the sides. Katara is a little better about not drenching him every time she slips, or every time he pauses to catch his breath; by “a little better,” Zuko means she only sends sandy saltwater spilling over him about six times between the bottom of the switchback path and the top. Everytime she does, she seems embarrassed, muttering apologies and moving her hands to dry his clothes back out. The sun is bright and hot, and Zuko can feel his bending again, so each time she does, he pointedly makes his clothes steam, just a little. Just to show that he _also_ can bend, even though, unlike Katara, he doesn’t throw his element against _her_ every time he slips.

The shirt binding his wrists stays soaked. That, she seems to keep drenching intentionally. At one point, halfway up the path, he finds himself wondering how well that works. Can she really sense how much water is left in the shirt, well enough to know whether he’s trying to burn through it not?

A moment later, he’s tested this, and is dripping wet.

“Sorry,” Katara says, sighing, and an instant later, he’s dry again. 

So that answers that. She didn’t seem to notice he did it on purpose, though. Zuko glances back at her, and she frowns.

“What?”  
  
“Nothing,” Zuko says, and turns around to keep walking. She looks...stressed. Which makes sense, Zuko knows, given that she’s taken an enemy firebender prisoner, and that he could attack her at any time, but still. There’s something familiar about her that doesn’t he like, something about how stressed and determined and tense she looks that reminds Zuko of being thirteen and looking in the mirror. 

Katara's younger than he is, Zuko thinks. Probably around Azula’s age. He doesn’t quite know what to make of that.

They reach the tops of the cliffs, and shit, going up is harder than going down. Zuko’s out of breath, and it seems like she is, too. He’s also thirsty, and, now that he thinks about it, hungry. He remembers suddenly that the whole time she was his prisoner yesterday, he hadn’t had them stop to eat anything, or to drink. And for some reason - even though it shouldn’t matter - he feels bad about it.

“Alright, firebender,” Katara says, straightening up. “Let’s keep moving.”  
  
“Great,” Zuko says, mostly because he knows it will annoy her. He glances up at the sky, checking the sun’s progress. “We’ve made good time today.”  
  
She grinds her teeth together. “ _Prisoner_ , firebender.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Zuko says, waving it away with his bound hands. “I get it. Let’s move?”  
  
She makes a frustrated sound, glowers at him, and then they’re walking again.

“Hey, ocean queen,” Zuko says, after a few minutes. He’s still almost certain she told him her name last night, pretty sure he didn’t dream that, but something about saying it feels wrong. Too intimate, somehow, to say _Katara_ out loud here. “Why did we climb those cliffs? Not that I mind, but wouldn’t a waterbender want to stay closer to the ocean?”  
  
“I’ve got three pouches of water, if that’s what your wondering,” she says, which was not what he was wondering, at all. “So if you’re thinking about trying anything -”

“I’m not going to,” Zuko says, rolling his eyes. “But seriously, we’re going to walk through the desert now?”

“The beach ended,” Katara says, flatly. “Did you want to swim?”  
  
That’s fair, although it doesn’t answer Zuko’s actual question. “Why didn’t you take a boat out of Fuyang?”  
  
Zuko can hear her stop walking behind him. He stops, too, and turns around. 

“Do you really need me to say it?” she asks, glaring at him. “Your navy, that’s why. I was going to sail, and it would only have taken a few days, but now…”  
  
“Oh, yeah,” Zuko says, as though this were a development he knew about. “I forgot they were going to be coming in now.”  
  
Her face hardens. “Yeah,” she says, and her voice is like ice. “Must be nice, to forget about your own navy.”

Zuko does not know what that means, but he’s not going to argue with a fourteen year old who’s talking like that. Azula got like that, too, when she was pissed; stone-faced and cold-voiced, and it always meant he’d lost the argument before it had begun.

After that, they walk in silence. The path curves back and forth along the cliffs. When they’re closer, Katara walks right up to the edge, where water is pooled along the rocky sides, and pulls enough of it up to soak the shirt around Zuko’s wrists. When they’re farther, she gets that tense, terrified, stressed look again, and Zuko almost wishes for the path to curve again. Her anxiety is somehow infectious, making Zuko tense and on-edge for no reason.

“Can you - not?” he asks, at one point, and he doesn’t need to see her face to know that she’s glowering at him again.

“Not what, firebender?”  
  
“Not, I don’t know, spill stress onto everything? I think even the armadillo-rabbits are getting freaked out.”  
  
“I’m sorry that it’s a little stressful to travel with a _Fire Nation prince_ ,” she says. But the glower in her voice has relaxed, just a little. 

“So what were you doing in Fuyang?” she asks, a moment later. And what the hell, Zuko thinks, it’s not like it’ll hurt to tell her.

“Got shipwrecked,” he says, with a shrug. 

“Really?”  
  
He turns. “What, you don’t have shipwrecks in the Water Tribe?”

“No, I just thought - never mind. What about your crew? What happened to them?”

She sounds like she’s genuinely curious, and now Zuko regrets telling her. He kicks a rock as he passes it, and a meerkat-snake pokes up from a hole and hisses at him.

“It wasn’t...exactly a shipwreck,” Zuko admits grudgingly. “There was a storm. I was on deck. I got thrown overboard.”  
  
Katara is quiet for a few minutes, before asking, almost carefully, “Why were you on the deck?”  
  
And then there’s a noise, and Zuko is saved from answering by a camel-bear, which comes out of _nowhere_ and starts ambling across the path towards them. He freezes, and feels Katara do the same behind him.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Zuko breathes. It’s bigger than he is. It looks like it could eat him and still be hungry enough to finish off Katara as dessert.

“Maybe if we just stay still -” Katara says, very quietly, and Zuko nods, a fraction of an inch. He can’t see her. Fuck, he’s going get _eaten by a camel-bear in the middle of the desert_ and no one is going to have any idea what happened to him. To either of them. They’re going to be breakfast for this horrifying desert predator. Three years of searching for the Avatar, sixteen years of being Prince of the Fire Nation, and a fucking _camel-bear_ is going to kill him. 

It comes closer, still looking curious, as though it’s investigating. Zuko carefully backs up, as slowly as he can, and as he doesn’t walk into Katara, he assumes she’s doing the same thing. The camel-bear stops walking and lifts its head, looking directly at Zuko, and Zuko goes completely still. He doesn’t remember whether you’re supposed to hold eye contact or avoid it with these things, but since it’s too late to do the latter, he tries to stay steady, to keep his eyes on the camel’s.

And then it charges, and flames tear out of Zuko’s hands. The camel-bear stops in his tracks, teeth bared, hissing. More fire flies towards it. Zuko is pretty sure he has no control over his bending, right now; fire seems to be flinging itself from his hands and towards this homicidal animal without any signal from him. But it’s working. Another jet of flame, and the camel-bear growls, raises its claws , and then turns tail and runs away, disappearing into the sandy hills to their left.

It’s quiet for a moment. 

And then Zuko realizes two things: they’re no longer right next to the ocean, and Katara is still frozen behind him. 

Zuko turns around, and a moment later, he’s not a prisoner anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're confused about how the cave was "underwater" but not filled with water, it's because the mouth of the cave is a lot smaller than the rest of it. There's the entrance to the cave, which is underwater, but then the cave slopes up, before leveling out, which is why there's a dry space for Zuko and Katara to sleep. If you're still confused (I doubt anyone cares this much lol, but it's the kind of thing that would bother me) feel free to come over to my tumblr (https://geckosocks.tumblr.com/) and I'll draw you a picture. (also feel free to come say hi if you don't have cave questions!) Also, comments are life and joy; they make me so happy, if you have time to leave one.


End file.
